May 27, 2018

Each week, you may find information here about the music in the traditional worship services at First United Methodist Church in Lewisville, Texas.  Some of this information is original; much of it is "borrowed" from other sources such as Wikipedia, GBOD, and hymnary.org.  It is my hope that this information will enhance your understanding and enrich your worship experience.  

About the Piano Music:

Amazing Grace


"Amazing Grace" was written by the English poet and clergyman John Newton (1725–1807).  With the message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of sins committed and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.


Newton wrote the words from personal experience. He grew up without any particular religious conviction, but his life's path was formed by a variety of twists and coincidences that were often put into motion by his recalcitrant insubordination. He was drafted into the Royal Navy, and after leaving the service became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1748, a violent storm battered his vessel so severely that he called out to God for mercy, a moment that marked his spiritual conversion. However, he continued his slave trading career until 1754 or 1755, when he ended his seafaring altogether and began studying Christian theology.


Ordained in the Church of England in 1764, Newton became curate of Olney, Buckinghamshire, where he began to write hymns with poet William Cowper. "Amazing Grace" was written to illustrate a sermon on New Year's Day of 1773. It was first printed in 1779 in Newton and Cowper's Olney Hymns, but settled into relative obscurity in England. In the United States however, "Amazing Grace" was used extensively during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century. 


It has been associated with more than 20 melodies, but in 1835 it was joined to a tune named NEW BRITAIN, to which it is most frequently sung today.  NEW BRITAIN was originally a folk tune, probably sung slowly with grace notes and melodic embellishments. Typical of the Appalachian tunes from the southern United States, NEW BRITAIN is pentatonic with melodic figures that outline triads. It was first published as a hymn tune in shape notes in Columbian Harmony (1829) to the text "Arise, my soul, my joyful pow'rs." It was first set to "Amazing Grace" in William Walker's (PHH 44) Southern Harmony (1835)

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me, His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be, As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil, A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who called me here below, Will be forever mine.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’d first begun.

This arrangement appears in a book of piano arrangements that were written by staff writers for a music publishing company.  Unfortunately, none of them are credited, so we don’t know who wrote this simple, yet beautiful setting.

Jesus Love Me! This I Know – David Angerman

"Jesus Loves Me" was written by Anna Bartlett Warner (1827–1915). The lyrics first appeared as a poem in the context of an 1860 novel called Say and Seal, written by her older sister Susan Warner (1819–1885), in which the words were spoken as a comforting poem to a dying child. The tune was added in 1862 by William Bradbury (1816–1868). Along with his tune, Bradbury added his own chorus "Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus Loves me" After publication as a song it became one of the most popular Christian hymns in churches around the world, especially among children.

Anna’s family home was quite close to the United States Military Academy at West Point, in New York, in the era just before the Civil War. Each Sunday Anna taught Bible classes to the cadets. Her remains are buried in the military cemetery, and her family home is now a museum on the grounds of the United States Military Academy.

Her original poem follows:

Jesus loves me! This I know, For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong; They are weak but He is strong.

Jesus loves me! Loves me still, Tho I'm very weak and ill,
That I might from sin be free, Bled and died upon the tree.

Jesus loves me! He who died Heaven's gate to open wide;
He will wash away my sin, Let His little child come in.

Jesus loves me! He will stay Close beside me all the way.
Thou hast bled and died for me; I will henceforth live for Thee.

David Angerman (b. 1955-) has been Director of Music and organist at Bethany Lutheran Church, Austin, Texas, since 1980. He holds a Bachelor of Music Education Degree and Master of Church Music Degree from Baylor University and a Master of Music Degree in Organ Performance from the University of Texas in Austin.  As a composer he has to his credit more than 100 published works including choral and handbell music as well as organ and piano solos. He has also written the music for several youth and children's musicals, and co-authored, along with Joseph Martin and Mark Hayes, KEYS FOR THE KINGDOM, a piano method for the Christian student, published by Shawnee Press. Many of his published works have been awarded Editor's Choice designations.

Redeemed – John Carter

Frances Jane Crosby (1820-1915) was born in New York and became blind at the age of six weeks from maltreatment of her eyes during an illness. At the age of fifteen she entered the New York Institution for the Blind. She became a teacher in the institution in 1847. She taught English grammar, rhetoric and American history. She wrote the words to many songs for Dr. George F. Root, then the teacher of music at the blind institution. Subsequently she wrote the words for the cantatas of The Flower Queen and The Pilgrim Fathers, all of which were very popular in their day, though it was not generally known at the time that she was the author.

While teaching at the institution she met Presidents Van Buren and Tyler, and she had the honor of being the first woman whose voice was heard publicly in the Senate Chamber at Washington, reading one of her poems. She wrote over eight thousand hymns and poems in her lifetime.  She knew a great many portions of the Bible by heart and memorized the first four books of the Old Testament and the four Gospels before she was ten years of age.   Her scope of subjects is wide, embracing everything from a contemplation of heaven to an appeal to the work of this world.  Most of her published hymns appeared under the name of Fanny J. Crosby or Mrs. Yan Alstyne, but she also wrote under over 200 pen names.

Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it! Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb;
redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child, and forever I am.

Redeemed, and so happy in Jesus, no language my rapture can tell;
I know that the light of His presence with me doth continually dwell.

I think of my blessed Redeemer, I think of Him all the day long;
I sing, for I cannot be silent; His love is the theme of my song.

John Carter is a productive and versatile composer with a notable and long-standing career in choral composition. In addition to hundreds of sacred and secular choral pieces, Carter has written several collections of piano and organ literature, bell choir arrangements, a number of works for musical theatre and an opera. He is a well-known clinician and guest conductor throughout the United States.  He is currently serving as Director of Music at the University Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio.

About the Choral Music:

I Will Arise and Go to Jesus – Austin Lovelace

Joseph Hart (1712-1768) was never voted "most likely to become a minister" by the friends of his youth. Though raised among Christian influences, he was not serious about spiritual matters and soon fell into, as he put it, the "vanities and vices" of youth. But as an adult he began to feel a concern for his soul, running what he described as "an uneasy restless round of sinning and repenting." Frustrated by his inner turmoil, he looked for answers elsewhere; and listening to all the wrong voices of the age, fell captive to a doctrine that taught grace unfettered by any responsibility. Among his scholarly writings during this period was a scathing attack on John Wesley titled The Unreasonableness of Religion (1741), which reveals his adherence to the rationalist critics and to a certain extent to deism. But approaching the age of forty, he became convicted of the error of his beliefs and reformed his ways. Over the next few years he began in earnest to seek a truer path, and eventually became a minister to a Congregationalist body in London.

Hymns composed on various subjects (1759), which went through countless editions as "Hart's Hymns," was written during this period of deep soul-searching and repentance beginning around 1757. According to Hart, "They are published not only in the same order, but also in the same manner in which they were first written: for though they have since undergone a cursory revisal, and have been lightly retouched, the alterations I have made in them are neither very numerous nor material." His collection is therefore not only an anthology of his work, but a spiritual journal of this period in his life. And for a body of hymns so quickly got together, his work well stood the test of time. Augmented by his supplements of 1762 and 1768, "Hart's Hymns" became a staple in Calvinist circles.

"Come, ye sinners" is held by many to be Hart's greatest hymn. It is #100 in his original 1759 collection, and falls within the last group of hymns in that work, probably written in the spring of that year. These hymns as a group seem to look back in review of Hart's spiritual journey, though they still shows flashes of that "disorder and darkness of soul" that plagued him over his sins. Frequent themes are the assurance of salvation, our hopelessness without the atoning work of Christ, the majesty of Christ revealed in His humble sacrifice, and encouragement to the weak in faith.  To this extent, then, "Come, ye sinners" is as much autobiography as invitation.

Raymond Glover has identified this as a variant on one of the stanzas of Caleb Jarvis Taylor's "Don't you see my Jesus coming?" Caleb Jarvis Taylor (1763-1816) was a schoolteacher from Maryland who served as a fill-in preacher for Methodist churches in western Virginia and Pennsylvania. In 1792 he moved to north central Kentucky, where he continued to teach school as his primary support, but preached wherever and whenever he could. Sometimes he preached as an official circuit rider sponsored by a Methodist association, but more often it was his willingness to fill vacancies for other preachers that kept him in the pulpit. He was the founder of the Mt. Gilead Methodist Church just north of Paris, Kentucky, also known as the Old Matheny Meeting House, probably the earliest Methodist congregation in that area northeast of Lexington. By 1795 he relocated to the vicinity of what is now Maysville, Kentucky, along the Ohio River.

The Mt. Gilead meeting house was less than ten miles from the famous Cane Ridge meeting house, so it was inevitable that Taylor was right in the thick of the Second Great Awakening. And though he was known to be a successful revivalist, he was noted by his contemporaries as well as by modern historians as one of the chief songwriters of this watershed moment in American religious history.

The earliest appearance of this tune in print appears to be that found in William Walker's Southern Harmony. As was typical of the old colonial singing-school music, Walker's arrangement places the melody in the tenor voice; he added a bass part below and a "treble" above. The Sacred Harp version has an alto part, added in later years, to fill out a more typical voicing. William "Singing Billy" Walker (1809-1875) was a Baptist song leader from Spartanburg, South Carolina. His Southern Harmony (1835) is one of the most important hymn publications in American history, because it preserved many of the melodies of the camp-meeting folk hymns at a time when the generation that created them was passing away. (Earlier publications of camp-meeting songs did not include the music.)

“Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” was written by the 18th century pastor and hymnist Robert Robinson. Robert Robinson (1735-1790) was eight years old at the time of his father's death. He was a very bright, headstrong boy who became increasingly more difficult for his mother to handle. When Robert turned 14, she sent him to London for an apprenticeship with a barber. Robert proceeded to get into even more trouble, taking on a life of drinking and gambling. 

At 17, Robert and some of his drinking buddies decided to attend an evangelistic meeting, with a plan to make fun of the proceedings. When George Whitfield began to preach, Robert felt as if the sermon was just for him. He did not respond to the altar call that night, but the words of the evangelist would haunt him for the next three years.  On Dec. 10, 1755, at age 20, Robert finally yielded his life to Christ, and very soon thereafter answered a call to the ministry. Three years later, as he was preparing to preach a sermon at the Calvinist Methodist Chapel in Norfolk, England, Robert wrote “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” to complement his sermon. The music for the hymn was composed by Asahel Nettleton in 1813.

Austin C. Lovelace (1919-2010) was called by many the Dean of American Church music. Over many years he worked at a number of Methodist and Presbyterian churches in Colorado, North Carolina, Illinois, and Nebraska. He also worked at Union Theological Seminary in N.Y.C. and Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill. He traveled widely as a Director of Music for general conferences, lecturer, and consultant. He was the organist for the Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1954. He was a prolific writer and composer with over 700 compositions for church in print, as well as numerous articles and books on church hymnody.

            I will arise and go to Jesus; he will embrace me with his arms.

                In the arms of my dear Savior, Oh! There are ten thousand charms.

            Come, thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace;

            Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of Loudest praise.

            Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above;

              Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it, mount of thy redeeming love.

I will arise and go to Jesus; he will embrace me with his arms.

               In the arms of my dear Savior, Oh! There are ten thousand charms.

About the Hymns:

Holy, Holy, Holy

Reginald Heber (1783-1826) wrote this text for Trinity Sunday, the day for which lectionary in the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer prescribes the reading of Revelation 4. Using reverent and apocalyptic language, "Holy, Holy, Holy!" alludes to Revelation 4:6-11; 5:13; 15:2-4; and Isaiah 6:1-3 to sing the great majesty of the triune God. Note the cosmic scope of the text: human beings, saints and angels in glory, and all creation praise the name of the Lord. Though God's holiness, love, and purity are cloaked in mystery, we can still experience God's mercy and mighty power, and we can participate in praising God.  It references the Sanctus, which is often called the "Holy holy holy" in English. The name is a tribute to the First Council of Nicaea which formalized the doctrine of the Trinity in 325.

It was first published in the third edition (1826) of A Selection of Psalms and Hymns for the Parish Church of Banbury and was also published posthumously in Heber's Hymns Written and Adapted to the Weekly Church Services of the Year (1827). The unusual single rhyme (all on the "ee" sound) and the uneven number of syllables in some lines have not detracted from the hymn's popularity.  It was soon adopted by hymn-book compilers, and is the best known and most widely used of the author's hymns.

The tune NICAEA is named after the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) at which church leaders began to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity to oppose the heresies of Arius. NICAEA is one of the finest tunes composed by John B. Dykes  and the only one of his many tunes that resembles the style of the Lutheran chorale – its similarity to WACHET AUF (613) is noted by various scholars. Dykes wrote NICAEA as a setting for Reginald's text, and ever since their first publication together in Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861), the text and tune have been virtually inseparable.

Lord, I Want to be a Christian

In Negro Slave Songs in the United States (1953), Miles Mark Fisher suggests that this African American spiritual could well have originated in Virginia in the 1750s, based on this story from Hanover, Virginia, 1756: "A black slave asked Presbyterian preacher William Davies, 'I come to you, sir, that you may tell me some good things concerning Jesus Christ and my duty to God, for I am resolved not to live any more as I have done. . . Lord [Sir], I want to be a Christian.'"  Both text and tune were first published in Folk Songs of the American Negro (1907), compiled by brothers Frederik Work and John W. Work, Jr.